Quote:
Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg
The question in my mind, when I read the headline, was how Rakuten stands regarding freedom to read. But googling in search of cooperation with national censorship, I can't find problems.
If you go by the adversary-of-my-adversary-is-my-friend principle, it's a good sign that the Great Firewall of China blocks their home web site, rakuten.co.jp:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website...mainland_China |
I'm not really sure what your point is here, but I have no problem getting to Rakuten.com from China. You do know it's a Japanese company, right? The Rakuten Group purchased Buy.com, Kobo and now OverDrive. They are the largest online retailer in Japan, and actually have a development office in Beijing. No actual retail presence in China yet but I believe it's because of their presence in Taiwan.
They are a very large, very powerful business now not only in Japan, but internationally. They were the first company in 50 years in Japan to be able to start up a new Baseball franchise. Might not sound like much, but this is a huge political accomplishment - not to mention financial expense.
They recently entered the eCommerce market in Malaysia, and are giving Alibaba a run for their money.
They have an online marketplace similar to Amazon where you can open your own storefront.
These guys are going to be around for a long time, and they move very, very quickly.
It will be interesting to see what they do with OverDrive and Kobo as the center of their eBook strategy.
I contacted them about putting my print books in their online catalog, and they have something in the works they will be announcing this year. Who knows if that will be another acquisition or if they will do something on their own, but they have expansion of print book sales as one of their targets for this year as well.